


flower through disarray

by The-Immortal-Moon (LunaKat)



Series: 2019 New Year's Resolution (Year of Bastille) [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, Needle Phobia, Needles, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:24:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/The-Immortal-Moon
Summary: “...you’re not still afraid of needles, are you?”





	flower through disarray

“Ed,  _please_  come out from under there.”

It’s impossible to tell from here, with the sheets messily spilling over the sides and serving to conceal him, but Trisha is fairly certain she sees Ed shake his head emphatically and curl up tighter into a ball. Here she is, on her knees before the bed, trying to coax her eldest out from beneath the bedframe where he’s been taking shelter for the last half hour. No matter how much she attempts to reassure, he remains stubbornly huddled on the dust-ridden floors, and her patience is starting to wear thin.

“Edward.” His name comes out a little more sharply than she intends, and she notices him flinch a little. “Come on. Out here, now.”

“No way!” comes the petulant shout.

She breathes in deeply. Now, Trisha considers herself a tolerant individual, but even she has her limits. “If you are not out of there by the count of three, then I’m grounding you.”

He sneezes from the dust bunnies and says nothing.

“One.” She crosses her arms.

Nothing.

“Two.”

That earns a little whimper, the kind that signals he’s _just_  about to give in.

“Two and a  _half_.”

“I don’t wanna get shot!” he wails.

Exasperation dampens her sympathy a bit, but it’s still there nonetheless. She isn’t entirely sure where Ed’s bad impression of shots and vaccinations came from—if some older kid waxed ghost stories about the needles or he accidentally caught a glimpse of one out of context when he and Al were playing over the Rockbell house or what. All she knows is that when they ran into Minnie Bines at the market today, who mentioned that she was going to the clinic for her kids’ shots, Ed’s eyes grew round. Then he asked if  _they_  would have to get shots, and she made the mistake of answering yes, of course. To which he bolted off running with a shriek and left her and Al chasing him all around the market place.

Now he’s under the bed, as though he can somehow guess she has neither the reach to grab him and pull him out or the physical strength to actually lift the bed and pull him out.

Well, they’re both peerlessly clever. Perchance his hiding place isn’t an accident.

So all she can do now is try to coax him into abandoning said hiding place. Which, so far, has been terribly unsuccessful. Perhaps it’s time to change tactics. “Even if you don’t get it today, you’d just have to get it another day, so you might as well do it today and get it over with.”

But that just has Ed shrink into an even smaller ball, eyes huge. Trisha stifles a groan.

“Mommy?”

The sound of Al’s voice makes Trisha turn around. Her younger son is peering in from around the doorway, his eyes round and wary in exactly the same way that Ed’s had been before she confirmed his fears and he went running. Anxiety trills in her at the thought of accidentally sending Al into a similar hysterical fit, and then having to fish  _both_  her sons out from beneath the bed.

“Yes, sweetie?” _Light. Try to keep your tone light. He isn’t panicking like Ed yet and he doesn’t need to._

It doesn’t seem to be very comforting. He grips the doorframe. “Do we really  _need_  the shots?”

She shuffles over to him on her knees, and he continues to peer at her with those big, round eyes. There’s an apprehension there, a tremor that could soon translate into a quivering lip if she doesn’t do something. “The shots are good for you, Al. They keep you from getting sick.”

Disbelief has him frowning, those nerves reluctantly to abate. He glances over his shoulder, as though he’s checking for any interloping eavesdroppers, then leans in with a hand cupped to his mouth. “Tommy says they melt your bones!” he whispers loudly.

Yeah, she thought as much. She ruffles his hair reassuringly. It’s dandelion-fluff soft. “Well, they don’t. I promise.”

He peers up through her fingers. “Do they _hurt_?”

Now, she could say no, but that would be an outright lie, one that might not be appreciated in hindsight. “Only for a little bit,” she assures instead. “It’s like a pinch. Like this, see.” And then she pinches his forearm lightly.

“Ow!”

“Aw, that didn’t hurt  _too_  bad, did it?” But just in case, she plants a kiss over it.

“I guess not,” he admits reluctantly. Still, he rubs at the offending spot.

There’s a shuffle from somewhere behind that has her casting a subtle glance over her shoulder. Ed’s golden eyes gleam cautiously out from the darkness, trying to determine just how safe the current atmosphere is, if it’s possible for him to bolt into another hiding place before he gets caught. Not unlike the time, Trisha muses wryly, that the boys snuck a cat into the house and it took them three days to persuade the feline out into the open again.

An idea strikes her suddenly, and she turns back to Al with a reassuring smile, pretending not to notice her eldest’s eyes on them. “I know it’s a little scary, but y’know what?”

He blinks and shakes his head wordlessly. And she _beams_ , nice and wide.

“I bet your big brother’s gonna protect you and he’s gonna be right by your side, ‘cause he isn’t afraid of  _anything_.”

Even though Al saw for himself how Ed fled in terror at the mention of the shots, this seems to make him perk up a little bit. “Really?”

“Really.” She glances over her shoulder. “Right, Ed?”

Sure enough, he has reluctantly crawled out from beneath the bed, thick wads of dust clinging to his shirt and bangs. There’s an irritable pout on his face, one that tells her is he  _well_  aware of her tactic and rather annoyed at himself for allowing it to sway him regardless. He knows that Al thinks the world of him, looks up to him—and he  _loves_  being the older sibling, loves being the one his little brother idolizes, the protector, the defender, the other half of the world. In fact, he loves it so much that he’s willing to brush aside even the most powerful of irrational fears to avoid putting that in jeopardy.

The five-year-old huffs as he starts crossly brushing the dust bunnies off his shirt. “...I guess.”

Problem officially solved! “Alright. How about we have lunch first, and then we go over to the Rockbells’. Sound good, boys?”

Neither of them looks particularly happy with this, but they acquiesce with a nod.

* * *

Trisha and her boys aren’t the only families in attendance at the Rockbell clinic this afternoon, which is to be expected, considering it  _is_  flu season. She recognizes Minnie Bines among the lineup of children and parents sitting in the hallway, along with a few other mothers she knew since grade school. Pinako must have put out a few games and coloring books for the children to entertain themselves with before she retreated into her workshop, and Winry is there to greet them with a smile. So Trisha spends the next fifteen minutes or so watching her boys occupy themselves while she pretends not to notice the now-familiar-at-this-point glances her way and subtle whispers laced with gossip.

Yes, she’s a single mother. Yes, she’s unmarried. Yes, her not-quite-husband disappeared earlier this year. No, she doesn’t care what these people have to say. They can think what they like. Besides, the hallway is nowhere nearly as crowded the marketplace, anyway. She can take it.

And she’s fine. The boys are fine. Everything is fine until the Mueller boy, Denis, emerges with teary eyes and his mother having to console him. The four other parents in attendance don’t react, nor does Winry, nor do any of the other children, who don’t even seem to notice. But Ed and Al  _do_  notice, and they exchange twin looks of trepidation.

Then Sarah pokes her head out of the doorway. “Ed, Al, you’re next.”

So Trisha stands and the boys follow her into one of the clinic rooms. It’s not quite the same as a real hospital, a little cheerier with the personal touch of light blue curtains popping against the off-white walls and the fact that the wooden cabinets are not painted, retaining their original honey-brown color. The hardwood floors, too, look homelier than linoleum tiling wood, and once again reiterate the fact that this is part of someone’s personal property. But the dark counters on the back is similar enough, as is the cot laden with crumpled tissue paper. There’s a slightly-ajar bathroom door, where patients who need to provide a urine sample are able to achieve some privacy, same as they would in a real hospital. And the stethoscope hanging from Sarah’s neck is more than enough to make up for the fact that she wears a white apron over a white coat.

“Good afternoon, boys,” Urey greets. He’s also wearing a stethoscope, though he lacks an apron like his wife. A metal table sits next to him, where a plastic tray houses a variety of syringes all brimming with vaccination. Long metal needles glint almost menacingly in the light, cold and sharp like the tip of a butcher’s knife before it sinks in deep.

Ed’s wide eyes find that tray and get stuck there while Al politely returns the greeting. Even if Ed’s vantage point is not particularly generous, the gleam of the needles seems enough to unsettle him all over again, enough to make his face lose a few good shades of color. Al glances over at his brother and his expression soon changes to match.

 _Uh oh_ , Trisha thinks. The problem with invoking the “brave older brother” trick is that, when brave big brother gets scared, you  _know_  it’s something to be scared of.

Neither Sarah or Urey seem to notice, the former smoothing out the tissue paper on the cot while the latter starts examining the needles. “Trish, can you get them up on the cot?” Sarah says.

And Trisha intends to do just that, because she can see how quickly their collective nerve is fraying, so she bends down and reaches out. But Ed doesn’t see that and the touch of her fingers, to him abrupt and anonymous, against his shoulder makes him yelp. Before she can offer any sort of reassure, they’re both running and there’s a whirlwind rush of footstep-based pandemonium that ends abruptly when the bathroom door is slammed shut.

It takes Trisha another second to process what has just occurred, and when she’s done, a wave of exasperation swamps her. “Boys!” she calls as she stands and stomps her way over to the door.

There is a click from the other side as soon as she wraps a hand around the handle. Blinking, she attempts to turn it, only to find that it won’t go very far.

They’ve locked it.

Un _believable_.

“Edward! Alphonse!” The side of her fist collides rather loudly and repeatedly with the wood. “You get out of there  _this instant_!”

“They’re gonna  _stab_  us!” comes Ed’s hysteria through the door.

Wincing, Trisha sends an apologetic look over her shoulder at the Rockbell couple. Sarah stands with a needle in one hand, peering with general bemusement down at the instrument as though she genuinely cannot understand how anyone can find it so terrifying. Meanwhile, Urey frowns as he rummages around a drawer, probably in search for the key.

“They are not  _stabbing_  you,” Trisha insists, but her words fall on deaf ears. She tries the handle again, but it still won’t budge, so she just knocks again. Her face is starting to heat. “It’ll only last a second!”

“Easy for  _you_  to say!” Ed retorts, the fear taking on a hostile mask. “You don’t have to get shot!”

“You’re  _not_  getting...” Exasperation steals the rest of the chastisement away and she finds herself leaning her head against the door with a groan, the wood cool against the vexed flush in her forehead. Yes, she’s always known children are a handful, and hers are no exception—but no one told her they would go locking themselves in the neighbors’ bathroom!

Thankfully, Urey finds the key then, this little piece of brass that glimmers like the hope incarnate between his fingers. Her face burns in embarrassment as she steps aside, unable to believe that her children could be so—well, actually, yes, she can believe they are this rowdy, they’re young boys. But still, it doesn’t exactly reflect very well on her parenting. But Urey, ever easy-going and rarely the type to condemn, only laughs good-naturedly and waves it off as he jams the key into the lock and starts to jiggle it free.

“It’s fine, Trisha. Just last week, Winry tried to feed her broccoli to the dog.” There’s a glorious click as the lock comes loose, and Trisha sighs in relief. Urey opens the door and then turns to address the children. “Okay, boys, I know you’re scared, but—”

He doesn’t finish, because then a tiny shoe comes soaring through the air, and Urey is forced to duck before it can hit him square in the face. The angle is wobbly at best and it ends up banging against the window, which creates a rather loud, startling noise that understandably causes Sarah to squeak despite being nowhere nearby. A bit of clear vaccination spurts out of the needle as the woman accidentally applies pressure to the end of the plunger, which brings Trisha’s attention to the needle and makes her stiffen. Being the good husband he is, Urey turns to check on his wife—which gives Al the opportunity to dart out, snatch the key from his slackened grip, and then slam the door back closed.

The three adults all turn in alarm as the lock clicks back into place.

Fresh exasperation seizes Trisha from head to toe and suddenly there’s a vein twitching in her temple. “ _Boys_!”

“I think I might have a spare key somewhere,” Urey offers as Trisha claps her hands over her nose and exhales noisily. It’s the only thing she can think to do to calm down, because if she does not want to explode right now. Not when there are people outside who can easily hear the chaos.

There’s  _enough_  gossip about her in the marketplace these days without her contributing to it. There goes bumbling little Trisha, can’t even properly reassure her children, much less keep them in check!

...why is being a parent so _hard_?

“Actually,” Sarah says, which makes them both turn, “I might have an idea.”

“What is it?” Trisha asks. Her image as good parent has already taken a rather sizeable hit, so what the hell, she’s open to suggestions. Besides, Sarah and Urey aren’t going to judge her—not like everyone else. They know her and she knows them and they have a loyalty that spans back to grade school.

“Well,” Sarah begins, finally setting the syringe down. The long needle gives a wicked glint as it is laid to rest beside its near-identical siblings. “It seems to me that a large part of the fear stems from the fact that the needle  _looks_  scary.”

“Uh huh...” Trisha can’t really fault her sons for being afraid of pointy things. That’s just common sense.

“So—what if you got a shot too, to show them that it’s safe? If you’re not scared, they’re not scared.”

Trisha actually has to blink and process that because there’s  _no way_  she heard that right. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Yeah!” Oblivious to the utter insanity of the proposal, Sarah smiles, somehow emboldened despite the fact that Trisha is staring blankly at her. “We’ll fill a needle full of saline—maybe our biggest needle, too, so that way theirs looks less intimidating by comparison—”

“You want to—” Trisha’s pulse hums louder in her ears as looks down at the array of hypodermic needles, at the long and wicked length of cold, sterilized metal. She briefly imagines that sharp end jabbing deep into her skin, right into blood and bone and muscle and sinew and—a shudder ripples down her spine. “You want to give me a  _shot_?”

Some hint of the anxiety blooming in her chest must make its way into her tone, because Urey casts her a sidelong look. “...you’re not still afraid of needles, are you?”

Straightening, Trisha glances between the couple, hoping her eyes aren’t quite as wide as they feel. Then she crosses her arms and must look away—not because there’s fear on her face, oh no. She just, um. The view outside is _very_ enticing. Nice pretty sky. “Who, me? No, of course not. I’m a grown woman! Being afraid of needles at my age! Don’t—don’t be ridiculous!”

Urey snorts a laugh.

“At least _I_  never wet the bed!” Trisha fires back. Which may seem uncalled for, but she grew up with one foot in the orphanage and another in the Rockbell house and Urey Rockbell is like the bratty older brother she never asked for. She doubts all the women who swoon over themselves about how noble it is for him to be a doctor ever had to endure the time he got paste and pipe-cleaners in her hair, had to get the ensuing mess cut out, and then spent the entirety of third grade looking like a bush.

He narrows his eyes at her, just like when she dared him to ride his bike down the hill without training wheels when they were little. “ _Once_ , when I was  _seven_.”

Before they can dissolve into an argument, Sarah steps between them, hands raised. “I think it’ll work.” She turns to Trisha, smiling reassuringly. “What do you say?”

Trisha turns back to the rows of needle-tipped syringes, the unholy menacing gleam of the steel points bringing back a sharp skittering of nerves that she thought she left behind when she turned thirteen. But nope, apparently being an adult means nothing, because just  _looking_  at them makes something in her shrivel into a little ball that then proceeds to duck under a metaphorical rock located in a dark, isolated corner—much less having someone jab one into her. Suddenly she’s twenty years younger, a knobby-kneed little orphan brat sitting in a chair in a white room as a doctor pulls out a needle as long as her forearm to stick all the way into her until it comes out the other end.

Okay, that may be an exaggerated mental image, but.

But.

She glances at the bathroom door, where her sons are probably shivering in a corner themselves and petrified at the prospect of a rather distorted image. Then she glances at Sarah’s face—Sarah, her closest friend for as long as she can remember, the first person she befriended in Risembool, who shared finger-paints with her in art class and used to make daisy chains with her in the spring and spent rainstorms with her jumping in the puddles. If she doesn’t trust Sarah, then she doesn’t trust anybody.

So Trisha sags and relents. “...okay.”

For the boys. 

* * *

The knowledge that their mom is going to be taking a shot too seems to reassure the boys to some degree—at least enough to convince them to unlock the door. They still peer fearfully out from the crack, their twin golden eyes like headlights, as they observe Trisha sitting on the tissue paper-draped cot with her sleeve rolled up.

True to her word, Sarah fishes out the biggest hypodermic needle in the Rockbell arsenal, which happens to possess a needle  _twice_  as long as the flu vaccination shots. The length of said needle seems to  _grin_  as it catches the afternoon light. As in, a sadistic grin with far too many teeth, the kind that Trisha always imagined on the faces of doctors in her nightmares when she was nine.

Even now, a grown woman of twenty-six, the sight of it nearly gives her a heart attack.

“Relax,” Urey whispers to her. And he’s right. She should try to look nonplussed—they’ve turned the cot to give the boys a better view, and the whole point is to put on a brave face, to show her sons that there is nothing to be afraid of.

Okay. But. The damn thing is  _enormous_.

With her free hand, Sarah grabs Trisha’s wrist and pulls her arm out, blue gaze searching diligently for a good place for Trisha to be impaled with. No, no, that’s not fair. Sarah is her friend, and it’s not her fault that she works with terrifying equipment. Trisha breathes in deeply, her heart thundering loudly against her ribs in a very concerted effort to break free of her sternum. In, out.

“Here we go,” Sarah offers in warning, and it’s all Trisha can do not to seize up on the spot, not to scream or kick or thrash as the pointed tip of that giant needle jabs into her flesh.

She squeezes her eyes shut and bites the inside of her cheek.  _Hard_. It’s just a little pinch, just like she told Al, nothing to worry about—but it _feels_ like being stabbed right through her stomach and the chest simultaneously and there’s a horribly crushing pressure around the place where this  _thing_  invades her  _arm_  and  _oh god get it out oh god get it get it out get it out she can’t breathe_ —

“There,” Sarah chirps brightly. “All done.”

Trisha snaps her eyes open to see that yes, the devil’s instrument has been removed and set aside, though the needle is still mocking her from afar. The barrel of the syringe has been emptied, the plunger squeezed all the way down to push out every drop. Urey hands her a cotton-ball to press to the puncture wound, where a little bead of blood is starting to well up crimson-bright against her skin. Oh my. She feels faint.

For the record, Trisha is  _not_  shaking. Nope, not even a faint little tremor in her hands, one of which she plants firm onto her knee and the other she presses against her forearm—not because she was scared and shaking. Who, her? No, no, adults don’t get scared of silly things like  _needles_!

Speaking of which, she turns to the bathroom door and casts a (shaky but) reassuring smile at her sons. “See, boys? Nothing to be afraid of.”

Tentatively, the door opens a little more, and Al is the first to emerge, hesitant like a young fawn stepping out of the undergrowth into a clearing. Most of the fear has left his face, replaced by a curiosity of the cautious variety, one that makes him a little reluctant to approach but not altogether unwilling. He, at least, seems to have been reassured by the display. But Ed—there is a far more distrustful component in his gaze, a skepticism that tells her he doesn’t fully buy it. Nonetheless, he follows his brother back out of the bathroom.

“Are you ready to get your shots now?” Trisha asks.

They exchange a look with one another, a little doubtful and a little hesitant, but not altogether unwilling. Then they look back at her.

“Will you hold our hands?” Al asks. Sweet, darling little Al.

Her smile widens, strengthens, becomes surer of itself. “Of course.”

Urey helps the boys onto the cot, the tissue-paper crinkling as they are each set down on either side of her. Ed is quick to grab fistfuls of the skirt of her dress, cautiously eyeing the discarded needle that jabbed its way into her arm. Al smiles sheepishly as Sarah returns his shoe to him, exchanging it for the key he snatched from Urey.

Since Al is closer to the table of needles, he ends up going first. Though the needle that Sarah prepares is ultimately much smaller than what Trisha endured, it still sends a little quiver through her nerves regardless. Al eyes it uneasily, swallowing. He ends up averting his gaze as Sarah positions it, and Trisha squeezes his tiny hand in hers as promised, having to look away herself, and Ed, watching, lets out a baleful squeak—

“Done,” Sarah says, and removes the needle.

Al peers down at the droplet-bead where he was punctured, utterly bewildered. “That’s it?”

Smiling pleasantly as any kind doctor would, Urey hands him a cotton ball. “That’s it.”

Even though the sight of the needle sends a fresh shudder down her spine, Trisha ruffles his hair. “Told you it was quick.”

There is still bemusement on Al’s face as he presses the cotton ball to the little cut.

Meanwhile, Ed’s face has lost several shades of color as he peers around Trisha’s torso with an expression that can only be described as horror. His gaze is trained firmly on the needles, and when Sarah picks up another one, an audible whimper vibrates low in his throat. The doctor’s approach provokes Ed to bury his face into Trisha’s side with a whine, and surprise blooms in her belly to discover a tremor in his shoulders.

 _Of all the things of mine to pick up on_ , Trisha thinks with a helpless sigh. “It’s okay, little man,” she assures, and rubs soothing circles onto his back.

Perhaps out of deference to Ed’s nearly palpable, Sarah moves quickly. His grip on Trisha’s dress tightens immensely as the needle makes contact. She wonders with no shortage of sympathy if he feels the same crushing pressure she did, if he’s also plagued by this irrational fear to run away.

“All finished,” says Sarah once she’s done and quickly sets the needle far out of harm’s way. Ed doesn’t raise his head immediately, so Urey passes the cotton ball to Trisha so she can press it over the wound herself.

It takes a few seconds, but finally her eldest dares to peer up again. The fearful waver in his eyes has not departed, as though he doesn’t trust that it’s actually over, that the needle is gone and can’t hurt him anymore. Then his gaze flickers over to where Trisha is applying pressure with the cotton ball, tentatively reaching out to touch it, not quite able to believe yet that there isn’t any pain—at least, not of the intense variety.

A smile graces her lips as he takes over the cotton ball, and with her hand now free, she ruffles his hair just as she did his brother. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He huffs and looks away with a scowl, muttering something about the idiocy of shots and he wasn’t scared anyway, needles are stupid, so totally pointless, what _ever_. On Trisha’s other side, Al snickers into his hand, which earns him a glare from his older brother. The kind of glare that promises a bout of wrestling later—accompanied by grass stains and bruises and all the things expected from a pair of tussling little boys. She can’t say she’s looking forward to doing laundry later, if that’s the case.

Giving a little chuckle, Urey scratches the back of his neck. “Hopefully there won’t be this much drama next year.”

 _Boy I hope not._  If she has to get a shot like that every year... A shiver crawls its way up her spine. Yes, she loves her sons, but she would rather that devotion not be tested annually in such a taxing manner.

On the other hand, Ed stiffens, swinging his gaze around with growing horror. “Waddya mean  _next year_?”

And Trisha—

...doesn’t have the heart to tell him.

**Author's Note:**

> Ed’s needle phobia is actually exclusive to ’03, but I can see BH/manga Ed also having it. I was pondering it, somehow started thinking about how little Ed inherited from Trisha, and... here we are. Title is from the lyrics of “Fake It” by Bastille (Album: Wild World).
> 
> Yes, three fics titled after Bastille song lyrics in as many months. I agree, this is getting out of hand.


End file.
